Belarus arrests, sentences journalists in crackdown

New York, December
21, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the prison sentences
handed down to journalists who
reported on post-election protests in Belarus, and the anti-media
rhetoric by President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

At a news conference Monday, a defiant Lukashenko pledged to
make journalists "answer for every word they write," the presidential press service
reported. He told journalists his government had detained a total of 639 people
for "holding an unsanctioned demonstration." Lukashenko went on to call the
protesters and those who covered them "pogromists and bandits."

The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) continued to
update its roster of journalists
arrested, beaten, and sentenced to jail terms in speedy trials in Minsk. More than 20
journalists have been arrested and at least as many beaten between the
outbreak of rallies Sunday evening and their forcible dispersal in the early
morning on Monday, according to local news reports and CPJ sources. Today, BAJ
reported that at least nine journalists have already been sentenced to jail
terms between 10 and 15 days on trumped-up charges of either organizing or
participating in unsanctioned demonstrations.

"We are appalled by the continued arrests and jail terms
handed down to journalists. This is a Soviet-style retaliatory technique to
chill critical coverage when tensions are heightened," CPJ Europe and Central
Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "We call on President Lukashenko
to ensure that all detained reporters are released at once and allowed to
continue working without fear of reprisal."

Prominent Belarusian journalists Natalya
Radina, editor of the pro-opposition news website Charter 97, and Irina Khalip, local
correspondent for the Moscow-based independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, both remained at the Minsk detention facility of the
Belarusian security service, the KGB. It is unclear what they are charged with,
and they have not had access to a lawyer, local sources told CPJ.

Khalip was beaten and forcibly taken by riot police while on
the air with the independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on Monday
morning. Her husband, opposition presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, was
repeatedly struck with clubs and also arrested; he is one of at least six
Lukashenko challengers who remained jailed today. Radina was arrested when
special forces stormed the office of Charter
97 on Monday morning and took her and three volunteers in the newsroom that
morning to the KGB headquarters. The three volunteers, who have not been
identified, were moved to a detention center in Zhodino district; each has been
sentenced to 10 days in jail, according to BelaPAN news agency.

Aleksandr Astafyev, a photojournalist with the St.
Petersburg-based Russian newspaper Moi
Rayon, who was detained Sunday evening while covering the protests in Independence Square,
was sentenced to 10 days in jail on Monday, the BAJ said. He is currently on a
hunger strike to protest the authorities' actions, according to local press
reports. Astafyev briefly recounted his experience for the Moscow-based Ekho
Moskvy today, while awaiting a new hearing in his case at the Palace of Justice
in Minsk. In
the past two days, he had been shuffled along with other journalists and
opposition activists from one detention facility to another, because "the Belarusian
Interior Ministry has arrested more people that they can hold," he told Ekho
Moskvy.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Minsk's Independence Square after the Election
Commission announced preliminary results declaring Lukashenko the winner with
almost 80 percent of the vote, which the opposition said was a tainted count. On
Monday, observers with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
criticized the lack of transparency in the vote tally.